Antelman to eliminate the opiate vol1

goals that Mendelssohn wanted to get across to his generation
of Jews? They may be summarized as follows:
1. Aid the Jews in moving out of the ghetto by telling them
that they must acquire the culture of their country in
order to do this and, through this, begin a process of
assimilation.
2. Sell the viewpoint that the Jewish religion has no dogmas
or articles of faith. Its spirit is "Freedom in doctrine and
conformity in action."
3. Popularize the concept that the doctrines and ethical
teachings of Judaism are those of reason, and hence,
universal.
4. Establish Judaism as only a "religion" and that loyalty to
it is compatible with a national state.
There is no doubt that the stature of Mendelssohn as a role
model of an intellectual Jew helped better the civil rights of
Jews in Germany and throughout Europe. However, when one
studies the philosophy of Mendelssohn and compares his
theology with that of either of his great contemporary co-
religionists such as Immanuel Kant or the great Talmudic
Scholar, Rabbi Ezekiel Landau of Prague (1713-1793), one is
rather appalled how such a second rate philosopher and
theologian gets star billing in the history books, and seems to
have found such tremendous and instantaneous recognition in
the Germany of his day.
While it is true that Mendelssohn had made a name for
himself before the founding of the llluminati in 1776, it is rather
startling that the works for which he is best known in the
Jewish community, a philosophical treatise entitled Jerusalem
and his Biur, which was a translation of the Bible into German,
were neither written nor published until after the llluminati had
gotten off the ground in Germany. Jerusalem appeared in
1783, and the first volume of his Biur came out in 1783.
Mendelssohn was aided in putting out the Biur by a circle of
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